George Soros, the veteran billionaire investor who is widely known as ‘the man who broke the bank of England’ has dramatically increased his fund, Soros Fund Management‘s stake in MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The investment firm now owns some 2.69 million shares of MaxLinear, up from 766,700 shares that it held as of March 31. The stake represents 5.19% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
With a net worth of $24.2 billion the 84-year-old George Soros occupies the 29th spot on Forbes’ list of world’s richest billionaires. In 2011, Soros returned all capital from outside investors and now runs the firm as a family office. Although the day-to-day operations of the fund are taken care of by its chief investment officer, Scott Bessent, Soros still remains involved with the fund. Soros established his firm in 1969 with $12 million. By the end of March, the market value of the firm’s public equity portfolio stood at $10.16 billion, with technology and finance stocks representing 26% and 20% of the holdings respectively. The turnover ratio for the quarter was at the high end of the spectrum at 62.95%. In 2014, Soros Fund generated 8% returns as compared to the industry’s average of 3.3%, according to HFR.
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Soros initiated a position in MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) during the first quarter. The $627.90 million tech company’s stock has surged by more than 44% so far this year. This compares extremely favorably with the semiconductors industry, which has risen by nearly 8% during the same period.
In its financial results for the first quarter, the provider of highly integrated, radio-frequency analog and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for broadband communications applications, beat both the top and bottom line estimates, reversing a past trend of it consistently failing to meet expectations. Since MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) has considerable exposure to China (71% of its 2014 revenues came from the world’s second-largest economy), it is set to benefit from the future rise in technological investments in the country.
During the first quarter MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) saw considerable growth in its cable and satellite businesses, especially in the higher-channel-count 24 channel DOCSIS 3.0 modems and gateways category. The company’s recent acquisition of Entropic Communications is expected to further solidify its broadband ecosystem by combining MaxLinear’s spectrum capture receivers with Entropic’s MoCA connectivity and analog channel stacking solutions. Heading into the future, MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL)’s management is aiming to further diversify its revenues across broadband cable, terrestrial, and new infrastructure markets. In this regard the company has launched new products, some of which were announced at the OFC Convention in Los Angeles in March. In the first three months of the year the company experienced a seasonal softness in demand for terrestrial set-top-box products and hybrid television tuners.
The popularity of MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) among the over 700 hedge funds that we track has increased over the last quarter, as 16 firms had an aggregate investment of $30.65 million in the company at the end of March as compared to 12 funds with $19.80 million invested at the end of the previous quarter. Besides Soros Fund Management, the two largest stockholders of MaxLinear, Inc. (NYSE:MXL) are Chuck Royce‘s Royce & Associates and Peter Rathjens, Bruce Clarke and John Campbell‘s Arrowstreet Capital, with respective stakes of 1.58 million shares valued at $12.82 million and 312,400 shares valued at $2.54 million.
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